Meet with gallery manager

[niccig]

I haunt Craigslist religiously and ran across a "call for artists" post for an urban/contemporary group show. Submissions were by email or by link to the artists' digital portfolio, so I pointed the gallery manager to my website. A day or so later, she mentioned several photos that she particularly liked (about 10) and says to me "I'd love to meet with you and see some of your work in person." We're meeting Thursday evening. So- I'm totally stoked (this being the first time I've gotten anywhere NEAR being part of a show), but I have no idea what to expect. I've chosen 18 8x10 photos that I consider really strong and put them in my trusty Itoya portfolio. I'm wondering if I should work on a fancier presentation, or if I have too many images/not enough. Are there any questions I should be prepared to answer? It's like going to my very first job interview, I'm buggin' out, man But I'm sooooo excited.

 

[craig]

Nice! You are psyched! Just keep a positive energy flowing. If you get too bugged things will go south very fast.

Personally I think 18 is slightly to many. 12-14 is the norm, but it is really up to the work. Idea is to hit them hard and hit them good. Presentation is very important. The order that they are viewed is also important. Needs to be a cohesive body of work as opposed to 18 random images. Spill all the details and we can help further.

Love & Bass

 

[Sw1tchFX]

If there's one thing I've learned about making portfolios, its that you should spend time on making them look really nice. Give your images justice, and make it look as nice as you can. If they see that you put all this time and effort into your portfolio, than they'll think you'll do the same with them.

I'd try to keep it at 10 images. 10 images that weren't on the website.

 

[niccig]

Thanks for the responses guys! Based on your advice, I'm definitely going to go for a nicer presentation. What do you think - just a nicer portfolio book, or mounted images in some sort of box/case?

I think I'll take along the images from the website, since she specifically asked for them, and then a few others. The stuff on my website is taken mostly from class/personal projects. So say I have a series of 3-5 images of theme A, and 3-5 images of theme B, there are only 1-2 images of each theme on the site. So I'll probably take the whole series of the ones that she asked for, and try to cut the number of images down a bit otherwise. Now that I think of it, this is also a really good opportunity to reorganize my web galleries. In all, I think it'll turn out being 3-4 separate (but somewhat related) series of photos. Does that make any sense at all?

 

[craig]

If you can afford to have them window mounted go for it. Dry mounted is another thought, but not very archival. Sounds like you are heading in the right direction with your images. Post a link to your website.

Love & Bass

 

[niccig]

Dry mounting is probably the way to go. I've never done window mounting myself, so I'm not really brave enough to try it, and I don't think there's anywhere around here that can do it by tomorrow evening without it being astronomically expensive.

I can't believe I don't have a link to my website in my signature! I'll do that right after I finish this post. You'll have to excuse the mess, I just had my website redesigned and some of the back-end programming isn't finished (therefore some pages don't actually do anything).

http://www.niccigilland.com

 

[niccig]

So if there are any of you out there that care to know -
Met with the director of Marx Studio in Covington, KY this evening and got 4 pieces accepted into their next show! Opening reception is June 1, so I've got to get crackin' on getting this stuff ready!

This opens a whole new can of worms as far as "OMG, what do I do now?" I don't think I really believed I had a chance of being accepted. Any suggestions for gallery presentation? I've decided on 11x14 prints, so should I use 16x20 mattes? (total dimension, I'll be double-matting I think)

If you like you can see them all in my "Urban" gallery, images 6,7,8, and 17

 

[craig]

Great!!!!!!!!!!!! Make sure that you are 120% happy with the print. As far as framing goes the options are limitless. Try them in a variety of sizes and materials. Only rule is that they look their absolute best.

Personally I go custom from a local frame shop. My favorite used to be just the matte under plexi. I graduated to black frames. Now I am considering barn wood.

Love & Bass

 

[niccig]

Thanks for the replies, all! I am having a heck of a time with getting this stuff ready. I took my B&W's down to the local pro lab to be custom-printed since I don't have access to a darkroom right now. Unfortunately they couldn't print from digital fast enough (they outsource), so I ordered the color one from mpix. I got the color one back on Tues, and it totally sucked - almost completely black, even though my monitor's calibrated and my prints have been good from there before. That left no time to get it reprinted from them before saturday (when they want all the work in to the gallery), so I went EVERYWHERE in town to try to get it done. Unbelievably, none of the pro places could print an 11x14 by Friday. I ended up getting it done at the Meijer same-day lab, and it looks fabulous! But now I'm really nervous about the rest of the prints, since there definitely won't be time to reprint (except perhaps at Meijer!) if they don't turn out well.

I'm also way stressed out about what this whole "opening reception" thing is about. What do I do? Just act like a gallery visitor, or stand around and talk to people about my pieces?

 

[craig]

Concentrate on the prints. I take the whole runway so to speak. Half hour before the reception I am still pasting titles on foamcore. Prioritize and focus. You will have a much easier time. The reception is a piece of cake. All the artists are psyched to have their work hanging. A lot of positive energy. Throw in wine and cheese... Everyone is having a good time.

Love & Bass